“...disappointed me last minute on two Irish crochet collars,” Mis’ Wiswell was holding forth, in her voice that talks like her vocal cords had gone flat, same as car-wheels.
“I’ve got company coming to-morrow, and I just simply will have to let both presents go, if I stay awake all night about it, as stay awake I s’pose I shall.”
Mis’ Holcomb looked over at me steady for a minute, like she’d see a thing she couldn’t name. Then she kind of give it up, and went on tying Stubby’s package. And just then she see what he’d wrote for a Christmas card. It was on a piece of wrapping-paper, and it said:
TO MY MOTHER
I CANT COM
MERY CRISMAS
STUB
“Merry Christmas!” Mis’ Holcomb says over like she hadn’t any strength. Then all of a sudden she stood up.
“Stubby,” she says, “you run out a minute, will you? You run over to the grocery and wait for me there a minute—quick. I’ll see to your package.”
He went when she said that.
And swift as a flash, before I could think at all what she meant, Mis’ Holcomb laid Stubby’s present down by her suit-case, and wheeled around and whipped two packages out of her shopping-bag, and faced the line of Friendship Village folks drawn up there to the window, taking their turns.
“Everybody!” she says, loud enough so’s they all heard her, “I’ve got more Christmas presents than I need. I’ll auction off some of ’em—all hand-made—to anybody that’s short of presents. I’ll show ’em to you. Come here and look at ’em, and make a bid.”
They looked at her for a minute, perfectly blank; and she was beginning to undo one of ’em.... And then all of a sudden I see her plan, what it was; and I walked right over beside of her.